[3] 124 Child of the Stable’s Secret Birth

‘Voice that rang through the courts on high
Contracted now to a wordless cry,
A voice to master the wind and wave,
The human heart and the hungry grave:
-----The voice of God through the cedar trees
-----Rolling forth as the sound of seas.’

We’ve had two famous carols now, so I thought I’d introduce one that you may not have heard. I only came across ‘Child of the Stable’s Secret Birth’ whilst researching this project, and here is its third verse. I greatly admire the whole text, which constantly avoids the many clichés of Christmas music. The author, Timothy Dudley-Smith, instead fills his verses with fresh poetry, and new ways of looking at the many paradoxes of the infant saviour.

The verse above gives us material which I haven’t encountered in the Advent repertoire, concerning Jesus’ voice as child and deity. I don’t know about you, but I really hate carols that talk about how hushed and quiet everything is. This is a new-born baby! Of course he’s gonna bawl his eyes out! Imagine, if you will, the first few moments after birth. This is the one short time of silence, as mother and father look on with real fear. Suddenly, the child takes his first gulp of air, and issues it right back out as a wail that would have split the night. All is well.

This is the ‘wordless cry’ that our God has been contracted to; a very real and earthly scream. Dudley-Smith contrasts this with the perfumed poetic language associated with Jesus the member of the Holy Trinity; BIG Jesus, incomprehensible Jesus. ‘Cedar trees’, ‘wind and wave’; these are things that enchant us, and maybe go some way to show the beauty and majesty of BIG Jesus, but ultimately they make no sense. If you find some sense in them, let me know, answers on a postcard! The ‘wordless cry’ is what makes sense to us as human beings, it’s something we have all encountered, as parents, siblings, and as children ourselves. By ‘contracting’ to a human, Jesus allows us to make sense of him. He brings God right down to our level, to say that we are all his children. Thanks be to God!